Dark Prince

Dark Prince Chapter Seventeen

Thank you for continuing to read DARK PRINCE. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I hold the copyright and no portion of this manuscript may be published in any medium other than at Nifty without my express and written permission. With the US Congress pretending to be a medieval religious Prince's court (and jury and executioner), it's best that only those over 18 in the US, 16 in the civilised world read this novel.

I would like to refer you to my other stories appearing on Nifty: GAMES AT DEAUVILLE currently appearing in the Beginnings and historical folders as well as FLIGHT AT PEENEMÜNDE that is complete at both folders.

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Enjoy!

Dave MacMillan

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Doris Shafly smiled at the secret service agent as he opened the car door for her.

"Welcome to the Hawk's Lair, Mrs. Shafly," he said. "How was the drive over from Atlanta?"

"Slow, Fred. Who would have thought five inches of snow in March? In Georgia? And we got another three feet in Washington day before yesterday."

"This weather sure does beat all -- I thought I'd heard it all when they had a foot of the stuff back home in Bangor on the Fourth of July. But DC going over eight feet this year really tops it."

"Maybe we should start listening to those crazy environmentalists," she grumbled under her breath. The president was going to give in somewhere and soon. Both the Canadians and Mexicans were threatening to slap sanctions on American goods again unless pollution laws were enforced, and this time it looked like they meant it.

"He's down by the lake, ma'am -- waiting for you," the agent told her. "Just follow the path," he continued, pointing to a gravel walkway. "And stay away from the woods -- we've put up an electronic defence system that'll down an army."

"Thank you, Fred," she told him. She took a step towards the walk but turned back to face the secret service agent. "I'm glad you got to come down with him -- you needed some R and R."

He smiled. "I did at that, Mrs. Shafly."

She turned then, pulled her coat close around her, and stepped onto the path. It

became covered at the back of the house. Reed Stephens' mother had planted the ivy along the walk and trained it to the wooden latticework when he was a boy. Now the covering was more than a foot thick and seven feet tall all the way down to the lake.

The walk was gloomy. She almost felt like she was inside a giant venus flytrap. She speeded up her steps. Doris didn't understand why the vice president hadn't just cut the mess down after his mother died. Instead, his wife had planted wisteria along the sides of the covering.

She stepped out into the clearing in front of the lake. She took a deep breath of the frigid air and forced herself to relax. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Shafly." She turned towards the voice and found herself facing another secret service agent. "He's in the cabin -- waiting for you."

"They still had snow plows clearing I-20 on the drive in," she groused.

"Well, you're here now." The man was friendly. Positive. All of them were. She decided it had to be something in the secret service training.

If they'd flown her out of Atlanta in a helicopter, she'd have been on time for this briefing. Of course they hadn't. She was just one more peon, and the secret service's only interest was in protecting Reed Stephens.

She followed the man into the closest woods silently, their boots crunching on snow. The agent stopped at the steps of the one room cabin as she started up them. She smiled at how clear the steps were; and her smile widened when she realised that she was crunching through cat litter to reach Reed Stephens' cabin.

Of course, he wouldn't use salt, she told herself. It might get into the soil and kill his damned plants. The vice president wouldn't even pull a weed. She shook her head slowly. Reed Stephens was weird. He'd be happy that damned talk show host was dead. He was going to be happy with the news she was bringing him. But he didn't want to kill some weeds.

He had seen her and stood at the inner door. He opened it as she closed the outer door and turned to face him. She smiled and stamped the snow off her boots before entering. "I'm sorry I'm late, Mr. Vice President."

He held up his hand. "The boys brought me the weather report. You're lucky to have made it, Doris." He closed the door behind her. "Coffee?"

She was hungry. "That'll be fine," she said, unbuttoning her coat as she walked towards the coffeepot on the sideboard across from the desk. Without watching him, she knew Reed Stephens had returned to his desk.

"I hope Patterson has given us something we can chew on this time," he said as she poured two cups of coffee.

She turned and, grinning, started towards his desk across the room. "I think you'll be happy with his news, sir."

She paused, giving him time to suspect something. "Your talk show host is dead."

"My -- that Kike bastard that kept trying to equate the Christian Men United For Morality to Hitler's SA? What did he die of?"

"A bullet to the head." She watched his face almost fall before he could pull his politician's mask over it.

"Hang on, Doris." He reached under the desk and she heard an audible snap as something was turned off. He smiled as he sat back up. "I don't think we need the recorder for this conversation."

"I don't think so either, sir," she answered and sipped at her coffee.

"Who did it?"

"Bob didn't think either of us needed to know that. It's done. There's no more syndicated radio chat about you being America's pretty fascist darling. What's left are the guys who simply stir up hate for the fun of it."

"Unfortunately, they're our kind of people until the revolution, then they can be shut up permanently."

"Bob also suggested that you plan on being out of the country for the first two weeks of May -- or down here. Out of the limelight at any rate."

The vice president suddenly grinned and rubbed his hands. "So, we really are going to do it!"

She shrugged and continued. "The faggots are beginning to fight back. Last night, there were two separate pitched battles between skinheads and Queer Nation in DC."

"They took the bait then," he opined, switching subjects with her. "It certainly took them long enough. Patterson's boy Trellum has been calling them out for a good two or three months."

"I don't understand why he's turned to the skinheads to provoke the homos. He started out using CMUM."

"What would happen if one of the Christian Center's men went down in one of those street brawls?"

"It wouldn't be a pretty picture," she agreed. "We'd be smeared in the liberal press from Ocean City to Long Beach."

He nodded. "And the skinheads have a reputation for being brawlers. That pulls the queers down into the pits with them."

"Bob hinted that, as soon as the CMUM has pulled this Queer Nation into the streets, that Trellum will be turning over other cities to the skinheads. He wants those units he's been using to change over to making people disappear."

Reed Stephens studied her for several moments. She could hear the silence in the room.

"That's right! He's talking a month and a half before we pull off the coup." He grinned suddenly. "A month and a half, Doris. Do you realise we're going to start changing things almost like tomorrow? I can't believe it!"

"Bob did say that was subject to change. I think he and this Trellum and your military advisor are going to sit down and make the decision to go ahead."

"Yeah. That sounds like our Reverend Patterson. Sounds like General Howell too. They're so slow to move, to commit themselves -- it's like watching snails race."

"You wouldn't want it to fail, Mr. Vice President," Doris Shafly offered quietly.

He shuddered. "No. No, I would want that. But it's so exciting, it's hard to sit still. Lenin didn't have much support at all when he closed down the Provisional Diet in St. Petersburg -- all he had was balls." He paused. "I guess I'd better give him Trotsky too -- that guy almost single-handedly put Lenin in power."

Doris studied the vice president for a moment. "It is so strange hearing you identify with the communists, sir."

"I respect talent, Doris -- even if I can't agree with a man's ideas. Lenin had the balls, nobody else has even come close to what he did. We've had to follow Hitler's approach to power. Building alliances, destabilising the social fabric, and playing in the political arena. It's a different game, one that just isn't as clean as that Russian's was."

* * *

Powdered snow rose high in the air and became two separate eddies in the still cold night at the edge of a thick copse of trees facing a clearing. A signpost stood beside an unpaved road that ran through the clearing.

I stepped out onto the unpaved lane and gazed at the compound before me. It was as Trellum remembered it. A wire fence nearly twelve metres high extended into the forest on both sides. Several centimetres inside the first fence was another of accordion wire, approximately five metres high. A closed gate stood at the end of the unpaved lane -- with watchtowers on both sides.

I looked up at the sign and smiled. "Posted land. Trespassers will be shot without warning," I read aloud and glanced at Emil. "Do you think they mean it?"

"The Aryan Order of the Teutonic Knights," he grumbled. "In medieval times, the Teutonic Knights were an order of Christian monks, Karl. When I was taking catechism, I was taught that Christ was love. How can these people say they worship Jesus and still hate?"

I shrugged. "Hate is the lowest of all emotions -- one found in all of us -- but it arises out of fear. Throughout history, there have been men who appeal to that hate, just as there have been men who appealed to the best in man." I nodded towards the sign.

"This Trellum has never gone beyond the entrance of their compound. He had a mental image that these Fascisti shoot at anything that comes close to them -- even the local sheriff." I grinned. "The outer fence is supposed to carry ten thousand volts of electricity, be careful."

"Okay, we're here -- now what?" asked the ever practical Emil.

"You take the left tower, I'll take the right one."

"We go in by air?"

I nodded and studied each post. "There are two men in each. We don't want them to give a warning."

I stood and began to make myself smaller. My arms moved across my chest as my body transformed and grew folds of fur-covered skin that attached to my pelvis. My clothing fell from me. I squeaked, pushed off the ground, and flapped my wings to gain altitude.

At an elevation of ten metres, I caught a current that raised me and carried me across the top of the wood-framed gate into the compound. I saw no one on the ground outside but circled the area one time to make sure before speeding towards the elevated guard tower.

I flew around the small cabin to make sure there were only the two of them but saw no one else. Landing on the step beneath the door, I changed back into human form.

Studying the tower room through the window, I decided on the point that put me closest to both men and projected myself into it. At the other guard tower, Emil did exactly as I was doing at mine.

The coffee smelled old and was a tangible entity in the room. The two men were half-asleep, bored with their guard duty and lulled by the convection heater that warmed them. I was reaching for their necks before they realised I was among them and could rouse themselves.

My hand found the furthest man's throat and closed around it as I lifted him from his chair. My other hand found the back of the second man's neck and pulled him towards me.

"Hello," I said and grinned at the man staring wild-eyed at my face closing with his own. "I'm hungry," I explained as my lips brushed the man's neck. "You will forgive me, yes?"

I opened my mouth and the man jerked as my fangs broke through the skin covering his jugular and pushing into the vein. The other man beat on my arm and tried to kick me as he fought to pull air into his lungs. I tightened his grip over his trachea and began to lap at the surge of the first man's blood.

I held the first man to me as his strength ebbed and his legs began to give under him. The struggling of the man at the end of his arm grew weaker and his hands moved to my wrist to push feebly against it.

I felt the first man's heart flutter and sucked deeply of the blood still pumping from his wound. The man's heart skipped another beat, struggled to regain its rhythm, failed, and was still. I released him and stepped back to watch him fall to the floor.

"He's dead," I told the man at the end of my arm. I studied the man's red face and bulging eyes for a moment. "My, but you are an ugly son of a bitch, aren't you?" I shook my head and grinned. "I guess we can go ahead and put you out of your misery, can't we?"

I took the man's jaw and began to shove it back while holding him off the floor. The man stared down his nose at me in horror. I quickly wrenched the man's head to one side and heard his spine snap. "See? That didn't hurt at all, did it?" I told the dead man and dropped his body onto that of his companion.

I stepped to the window closest the gate and studied the scene below me, fixing it in my mind. And projected myself there. |Are they dead?| I asked Emil.

I instantly had an image of Emil tossing individual popcorns into the air and managing to catch them in his mouth. |You are such a pig, Liebchen, but I love you any way,| I told him.

Glossed, full lips puckered in my mind, asking to be kissed.

I turned to study the compound. Directly before me was a small white frame building I assumed was a church from its steeple and the cross that covered the face of the building from its roof to the top of its double doors. I frowned when he realised that at the top of the cross was a black swastika on a red background.

To my left was a large unpainted frame single-storey building and I sensed a number of men sleeping there, a bunkhouse. To my right was a small house where I sensed only one man there, also asleep. Extending my mind further, I found three men almost a kilometre away on the other side of the buildings walking guard along the back of the compound.

|There are three armed men along the back fence and they're complaining about being cold.| I grinned. |I'll see if I can help them become even colder.|

|They're all Nazis, Karl -- and I know how much you like that particular flavour.| I sensed him snigger. |Enjoy! I'll catch up to you when you get back.| He looked at the single-storey building.

|Wait for me.|

I changed into wolf form and loped off down the trail towards the sentries at the rear of the compound.

The first guard was making his way along the chain fence, 300 metres from his closest companion. I stayed on the trail I had been followed and moved slowly towards the scent of the man.

I knew from the crunch of the sentry's boots on dry twigs that the man was moving towards me. I sat on his haunches and waited, my tongue lolling from my jaws.

The guard was bored. He was hoping that little flirt would be at church on Sunday. Her daddy might be the preacher's buddy and she might be under-aged, but he was willing to bet the girl knew what-for the way she wiggled her tail at himwhen daddy wasn't looking. She had been making eyes at him the past two-weeks too. He grinned and rubbed his palm over his crotch. He'd definitely set up a time that he could show her all the what-fors she could imagine this coming Sunday.

He was growing tumescent and imagining her grinding her round little buttocks against him as he pushed her panties to her knees when he realised there was something sitting in the path in front of him. He fumbled for his torch as he stopped and peered into the darkness ahead of him. I barked a soft greeting.

"A fucking dog!" the sentry snorted and relaxed.

I pushed my rump off the ground, took two steps towards the man, and sprang.

"What the...?"

My front paws hit the man in his chest then, toppling him. "Damn dog!" the mortal growled as he tried to turn and use his hands to break his fall. My body was in their way.

His back hit the ground carrying thirty kilograms of additional weight. The blow knocked the breath out of him. He stared down his nose as I raised its head and opened its jaws. He shivered as he felt warm saliva drip onto his neck.

"Shit!" he growled as my jaws encompassed the front of his throat and tried to bring his elbows under him so he could push himself up. My jaws snapped shut and the man gurgled as his trachea collapsed and his jugular vein was torn open.

The third sentry was more alert than the first two had been. I watched him for several minutes as he studied the path ahead of him as well as the underbrush beside him, his rifle held at ready, his finger pressed against its trigger guard.

I would have to take him quickly if I was going to prevent him from giving alarm. I decided a friendly dog wagging its tail in the path wasn't going to convince the man. I'd have to take him from behind and get the rifle away from him even before I could kill him.

The man passed by me and took several more steps before he stopped and cocked his head to listen to the night about him. I grinned. I set the spot immediately behind the man in my mind and projected myself there. My hand already reached around the man's arm for his finger on the trigger as I materialised behind him. My fingers encircled the man's finger and my other hand went over the man's mouth.

The man jerked in sudden fear at my touch, and I pulled his finger from the trigger. "Hello there," I whispered as I tore the finger from his hand. My hand on his mouth pulled his head back. I heard sinews breaking as his head continued in a downward arc towards the centre of his back. I pulled harder and heard the snap of bone. Smiling, I allowed the body to fall on the path.

I felt myself becoming smaller as I held my arms out. Skin grew to connect arms with flanks as I again became a bat. Pushing off the ground, I flapped hard to gain altitude. Moments later, I was winging back to Emil.

He was not where I had left him. I extended my mind and began to search for me. It did not take long. He was in the bunkhouse already. He had not waited for me. I touched his thoughts and he welcomed me.

I saw the building the way Emil saw it and with his emotions -- a long room with five double bunks on either side. High windows frosted with the late winter cold stood between each pair of bunks. Through the thin wall ahead of him were the latrine and showers. It was reminiscent of what he imagined an army barracks would look like. But, unlike any army in the world, the men in this barracks were not called together to uphold law and maintain reasonable order. These men sleeping before him sought to destroy law and replace order with unreasoning fear.

He was changing to mist as I linked with him. He rose to the top bunk closest to him. The man there snorted loudly in his sleep as the mist descended over him.

Emil felt the man's eyes spring open as he pressed against his face, pulling his life from him. The man kicked once and was still.

The mist released the husk that had been a man and dropped to the lower bunk and the oblivious mortal there.

He moved down the room through the first twelve beds and their inhabitants. He was gorged and the mist could barely lift from the floor to the lowest bunk. He followed the bed frame up to the first blanket and began to spread along it towards the sleeper's face.

He oozed along the man's body towards his face slowly and had reached his neck when the man jerked and began to awaken.

"What the...?" he growled, his mind pulling itself from the tendrils of sleep. The outer edge of the mist moved down the slope of his chin towards his mouth. "Jesus Christ!" he yelled before the mist could cover his mouth and claim his nostrils.

I hurried across the clearing. Emil was going to need me in the next few moments.

The man sat up and pushed hard at the mist as it began to coalesce over him, melding against his flesh. His effort to free himself became frantic as Emil wrapped himself around his head and allowed his mist-form to suffocate the man.

I broke the link between Emil's mind and my own.

"Goddamn!" the man in the top bunk bellowed as he stared down into the mist and made out his bunkmate beneath it. "There's something in here killing us," he called out as the mist sluggishly released the husk from its grip.

A broom crashed into Emil and he followed along it back to its wielder's arms.

"Get it off me!" the mortal screamed as the mist spread across his chest and expanded towards his face. Broom handles and rifle barrels poked into him as other men sought to pry Emil from the man as he found his mouth.

The man struggled. He pushed at spongy mist and fought to free his face from it. But when he attempted to pull air into his nose to feed his tortured lungs, tendrils of the mist moved into his nostrils and found his brain. And fed.

Even as mist, Emil Paulik knew sixteen men in the barracks were dead, that only four remained. He released the man's body and pulled into himself, becoming more solid as he rose on human legs once again.

The men before him in the centre of the aisle between the beds were young and they were frightened. They packed together, watching him closely as they retreated towards the rear of the room and the back door. I smiled as I understood their instinctive scheme for escape and projected myself to the doorway behind them.

"Kill him!" one demanded. "Kill the fucking monster. He can't take all of us at the same time."

I concentrated on the lad beginning to lower his rifle to his y-front-clad hip. I projected an image of mist rising up along his legs at the young man and grinned more broadly as the lad's eyes grew large before he dared look at the floor.

The youth screamed and dropped his rifle as his synaesthesia had the mist already on his thighs. "Get it off me!" he screamed. He stamped his feet and kicked at the image he felt melding with him.

His three companions moved away from him fearfully, watching him as they backed closer to me.

"Get it off me -- please!" His voice broke and he whimpered: "It's going to kill me too. Sweet Jesus!"

I could keep the boy seeing the mist and feeling it move up his body with only a small section of my mind. Emil faced the three remaining men as the boy frenzied stamping became stronger.

"It's eating my dick," their companion cried. "I'm going to die!"

A second rifle was training on him, and Emil gripped the hand on the barrel with his mind before I could react. The rifle jerked from his direction and moved slowly towards the youth who thought he was being eaten by the mist.

|Kill him,| Emil commanded the gunman. |Kill him now.|

The gunman stared down at his rifle and his hands holding it. The muscles in his finger on the trigger guard twitched. His index finger found the trigger. Explosions crashed into the barracks as the gunman sprayed the other youth with automatic fire.

The remaining two men broke and ran as the man's rifle continued to spray bullets into the body in the centre of the barracks. They ran into me.

I grabbed them by the nape of their necks and bared my fangs. The man on my right began to urinate on himself through his underpants. His companion fainted and I dropped him. "Bad boy," I told the soiled youth and sank my fangs into jugular, tearing it as best as a human jaw could. It was enough. His trachea collapsed and he grabbed at his neck. I let him go and watched as he sank to his knees, still trying to breathe.

I knelt and lifted the boy who had fainted, my hands going to his chin and the back of his head. I twisted until I heard the bone snap and dropped him. And I watched Emil begin to play with the last Aryan Order of the Teutonic Knights member.

"There's just you left," Emil told the boy who had emptied his rifle in his barracks mate.

The youth's head jerked towards him, his eyes wide. "What are you?" he squeaked.

"It doesn't matter."

The lad's body trembled its entire length. "You're naked," he groaned

"That doesn't matter, either," Emil answered and moved closer to him.

"You're going to kill me."

Emil felt the mortal's fear, the tightness of his every muscle, and realised he was frozen in place by his fear. "I thought you believed in dying for your cause," he said, taunting him as he stopped at his elbow.

"Don't kill me," he moaned and looked away from Emil. "Please, sir, do anything to me but just don't kill me."

"Anything?"

The young man's head jerked one time in a nod. Emil realised he was enjoying this more than he had the drug dealers that he hunted. He reached out and gripped the youth's nearest buttocks through his undergarment. The boy's body tightened further. "You like that?" Emil whispered and stuck his tongue out to caress the boy's jugular.

The lad sniffed, his eyes filling with tears. "You can make me queer if you let me live," he mumbled. Emil pressed his fangs against his neck as his hand slipped under the elastic of the y-fronts. His palm spread to grasp both buttocks.

"Show me you like my hand there," Emil told him and nibbled at his earlobe.

The boy twisted his head away, straining the muscles in his neck.

"Grind your bottom against my hand and show me just how much you want me to fuck you."

"You'll let me live?"

"Maybe. Who killed the man in Atlanta?"

The cheeks flexed tentatively under Emil's hand. "Push these things down to your knees. Get naked, boy."

He grinned as the youth gained courage and ground his bum against his hand. The boy shoved his underpants onto his thighs. "Me and one other -- we captured him. The preacher pulled the trigger, though."

"You held him down so this preacher could shoot him?"

"Yeah, I helped hold the Kike down. I had to show them I was a man."

"Turn around and kiss me."

"Please," the lad pleaded as he stared into Emil's face. "You're going to let me go, aren't you?"

"Kiss me like your life depends on it."

The lad continued to grind against Emil as his face moved slowly towards Emil's. Tears formed rivulets down his cheeks as he gazed hopefully into the vampire's face. He shut his eyes and pressed against Emil, his mouth searching for his.

The man's lips opened as they found his and the kiss was as fervent as any Emil had ever given him. The mortal's tumescence grew into erection between them as he ground himself against Emil with growing abandon.

Emil's hand left the lad's buttocks and, joining his other one, moved up over his smooth chest and onto his neck. One shaped the boy's chin while the other one went to the crown of his head. He pulled his face from the man's and smiled at him.

And twisted his head hard. Sinews popped before the lad's face could show his startlement. His spine snapped as his eyes began to grow large.

"I'm beginning to worry that you like killing too much, Liebchen," I said as I moved beside Emil.

"An eye for an eye, Karl. If the tables were turned, he wouldn't have thought anything of pulling the trigger -- before, during, or after." He studied me for a moment. "Bullies like these boys -- they either scare the shit out of you while they fuck you in the arse or they're down on their knees sucking dick."

"Just be sure a man is a bully first."

Emil's eyes misted and I saw the crimson sheen to the tears. "I get damned close to being a monster, don't I, Karl? It'd only take a tiny step and I'd be over the line -- any of us would be."

"Not as long as you keep the fact that there is a line firmly in mind, you won't."

Emil smiled. "I guess we go in and get their head honcho -- he's the only one left. You're going to want to interrogate him, aren't you?"

I grinned. "Yes, but I want to take him back to Washington to do that."

"Why?"

"I want Davis Trellum to find his body there. I want him to worry a bit."